GENERATOR: Sounds

KANEKO Generator Series features two multimedia sound-collage artists, Evic Shen and Marsha Fisher, who recast everyday objects and materials into gently chaotic sound worlds.

Straddling the divide between the bodily creation of sound and the ephemeral spirituality of sonic experiences, both artists create transformative performances for active listeners. 

Performances By:

New Ruins by Marsha Fisher

Hair Birth by Evic Shen

MARSHA FISCHER BIO:

Marsha Fisher is a Minneapolis-based composer and sound artist. Originally from Nebraska, they participated heavily in the Lincoln DIY scene. They bring the DIY ethos into their experimental music practice by using consumer tape players and cassettes to replicate musique concrete techniques in a context more similar to harsh noise. Fisher also runs the tape labels Gay Hippie Vampire and Activated Skeleton and has recent releases on Orb Tapes, Falt, and Full Spectrum Records.

VICTORIA SHEN BIO:

Victoria Shen is a sound artist, experimental music performer, and instrument-maker based in San Francisco.

Shen’s sound practice is concerned with the spatiality/physicality of sound and its relationship to the human body. Her music features analog modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics. Eschewing conventions in harmony and rhythm in favor of extreme textures and gestural tones, Shen uses what she calls “chaotic sound” to oppose signal and information, eluding traditionally embedded meaning.

Her personal identity; her body; is the space her work utilizes to restructure sonic meaning. In her live performances, she proposes an exploration between meaning and non-meaning through the physical activation of noise tropes. Her probing into these melodic voids interrogates the ways we perceive value within aural experiences. The appendage-like instruments and objects she makes, exemplify Shen’s ability to embody through sound her interest in the tension created by opposition: control and chaos, the unique and the mass-produced, the practical and the absurd.

Shen’s multimedia practice extends beyond musical composition and performance to include installation and non-traditional methods of distribution. Her DIY approach to deconstructing the concepts of “materiality, value and mass production” both integrate and re-contextualizes the formats of the readymade and assemblage techniques. For example, the album art for her debut LP, Hair Birth, utilizes copper to transform the cover into a loudspeaker through which the record can be played. In 2021, Shen produced a series of cut-up records in cast resin embedded with found materials, functioning not only as playable music media but as unique art objects. For recent performances, she pioneered the use of Needle Nails, acrylic nails with embedded turntable styluses, which allow her to play up to 5 tracks of a record at once. Needle Nails, Levitating speaker, and her Noise Combs are some of the objects created by her as part of an extensive repertoire of innovations in the design of sound augmentation. These sculptural elements invite the viewer to unpack one’s relationship with the material possibilities for creating sound.

Shen has performed solo across North America, Japan, Mexico, and Europe as Evicshen and as half of the duo TRIM in North America and the UK. Some notable venues in which she has performed include Boston City Hall, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ISSUE Project Room NY, DOMMUNE Tokyo, and Petreon Sculpture Park Cyprus. Shen has also been an artist in residence at Elektronmusikstudion EMS Stockholm-SE, WORM Rotterdam-NL, Kurimanzutto New York-US, the Sound Laboratory of The Royal Danish Academy Copenhagen-DK, and AUDIUM San Francisco.

About the Generator Series: Presented by KANEKO and Omaha Under the Radar, the Generator Series will present events that investigate music’s relationship to our physical world, seeking the connections between sound and architecture, sound and natural landscapes, sound, and the human body, and more. Focusing on music by living composers, including sound improvisation and experimental composition, the Generator Series will be an outlet for non-commercial music that asks questions about how we listen, and how we interact with sound in the 21st century. 

About Omaha Under the Radar: Omaha Under the Radar is an annual experimental performance festival in the Midwest. We celebrate cultural innovators with performances throughout the city of Omaha. The festival emerged from a desire to support innovative performers and creators living and working in the Midwest, and to connect this community to other performance communities throughout the United States. 

Since the first festival, held in 2014, Omaha Under the Radar has presented over 200 artists from more than one dozen cities throughout the United States. We work to present a multiplicity of genres, ideas, and identities through performances, talks, group discussions, and educational opportunities. Omaha Under the Radar is a 501(c)3 Nonprofit Organization. To make a tax-deductible donation in support of our programming efforts, visit our SUPPORT page.